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If you do nothing else today, go through this presentation! I am humbled by the intellectual capacity of (i) these early philosophers/natural scientists/physic
by Jun8 16y ago
If you do nothing else today, go through this presentation!
I am humbled by the intellectual capacity of (i) these early philosophers/natural scientists/physicists (they meant the same at they time) and (ii) Tao's gift of making things "as simple as possible, but not any simpler".
On a tangential thought: where are the Taos of chemistry, economics, or physics (Feynman was it when he was alive, but I think Tao's explanation powers surpass even him) and, of course, philosophy. Currently, science popularizers seem to either give you a watered down, sweetened, "intelligent layman" version (e.g. Hawking and Mlodinow's The Grand Design) or hard core stuff that only practitioners can understand.
- brainproxy 16y agoA highly accessible overview of Western philosophy, from the Greeks to present day, can be found in Frederick Copleston's 9-volume "A History of Philosophy" series. Vol 1, as sold on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/History-Philosophy-Vol-Pre-Socratics-Plotinus/dp/0385468431/ http://www.amazon.com/History-Philosophy-Vol-Pre-Socratics-P... A sharp person with a high school education, and a willingness to lookup terms or references s/he doesn't understand (with the help of Google, Wikipedia, etc.), would be able to readily digest these books, though even postdocs would find much in them that is challenging and intriguing.
- makmanalp 16y agohttp://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Dismal-Science/dp/0393049825 http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Dismal-Scie... This might be it for economics. My understanding of how markets work has been growing exponentially bedtime to bedtime.